Mount Saint John School: Around Deep River

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About Short Stories from a Small Town

This is a book of short stories taken from the things I saw and heard in my childhood in the factory town of Ansonia in southwestern Connecticut.

Most of these stories, or as true as I recall them because I witnessed these events many years ago through the eyes of child and are retold to you now with the pen and hindsight of an older man. The only exception is the story Beat Time which is based on the disappearance of Beat poet Lew Welch. Decades before I knew who Welch was, I was told that he had made his from California to New Haven, Connecticut, where was an alcoholic living in a mission. The notion fascinated me and I filed it away but never forgot it.

The collected stories are loosely modeled around Joyce’s novel, Dubliners (I also borrowed from the novels character and place names. Ivy Day, my character in “Local Orphan is Hero” is also the name of chapter in Dubliners, etc.) and like Joyce I wanted to write about my people, the people I knew as a child, the working class in small town America and I wanted to give a complete view of them as well. As a result the stories are about the divorced, Gays, black people, the working poor, the middle class, the lost and the found, the contented and the discontented.

Conversely many of the stories in this book are about starting life over again as a result of suicide (The Hanging Party, Small Town Tragedy, Beat Time) or from a near death experience (Anna Bell Lee and the Charge of the Light Brigade, A Brief Summer) and natural occurring death. (The Best Laid Plans, The Winter Years, Balanced and Serene)

With the exception of Jesus Loves Shaqunda, in each story there is a rebirth from the death. (Shaqunda is reported as having died of pneumonia in The Winter Years)

Sal, the desperate and depressed divorcee in Things Change, changes his life in Lunch Hour when asks the waitress for a date and she accepts. (Which we learn in Closing Time, the last story in the book) In The Arranged Time, Thisby is given the option of change and whether she takes it or, we don’t know. The death of Greta’s husband in A Matter of Time has led her to the diner and into the waiting arms of the outgoing and loveable Gabe.

Although the book is based on three sets of time (breakfast, lunch and dinner) and the diner is opened in the early morning and closed at night, time stands still inside the Diner. The hour on the big clock on the wall never changes time and much like my memories of that place, everything remains the same.

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Memoir of a life in Connecticut Foster Care

About No Time to Say Goodbye

In 1962, six year old John Tuohy, his two brothers and two sisters entered Connecticut’s foster care system and were promptly split apart. Over the next ten years, John would live in more than ten foster homes, group homes and state schools, from his native Waterbury to Ansonia, New Haven, West Haven, Deep River and Hartford. In the end, a decade later, the state returned him to the same home and the same parents they had taken him from. As tragic as is funny compelling story will make you cry and laugh as you journey with this child to overcome the obstacles of the foster care system and find his dreams.

http://www.amazon.com/No-Time-Say-Goodbye-Memoir/dp/0692361294/

http://amemoirofalifeinfostercare.blogspot.com/

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Voices from the (Naugatuck) Valley)

Visit the site at : http://storiesfromvoicesfromthevalley.blogspot.com/

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Old New England Proverbs and words of wisdom

John William Tuohy

mywriterssite.blogspot.com

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"The one thing I would like. I would like to learn how to spell Connecticut. Don't ask me why."-- Small Time Crooks, Woody Allen

Population: The population of Connecticut was 3,405,565 according to the 2000 U.S. Official Census. The most recent population estimate from the Connecticut Department of Public Health is 3,409,549 as of July 1, 2000.

Birth Rate: (2001--per 1,000 pop.) 12.5
Death Rate: (2001--per 1,000 pop.) 8.7
Length of Boundary: 371 miles
Length of Shoreline: 253 miles
Highest Altitude: Slope of Mt. Frissell in Salisbury 2,380 ft. above sea level
Total mileage of Rivers and Streams: Approx. 12,148
Total number of Lakes and Ponds: Approx. 19,591
State Parks: 93 on 33,449 acres
State Forests: 30 on 167,504 acres
State Monuments: 10 on 14 acres
Miles on State Highway System (as of Dec. 31, 2001): 4,122.27
State Maintained Access Roads and Ramps: 389.89
State Maintained Routes: 3,732.38
Miles of Divided Lane Highways in System: 730.42

The State Seal was provided for in the Constitution, 1818.
The State Flag was adopted by Act of the Legislature, 1897.
The State Flower, the Mountain Laurel, was adopted by Act of the Legislature, 1907.
The State Bird, the Robin, was adopted by Act of the Legislature, 1943.
The State Tree, the White Oak, was adopted by Act of the Legislature, 1947.
The State Animal, the Sperm Whale, Physeter Catodon, was adopted by Act of the Legislature, 1975.
The State Insect, the Praying Mantis, Mantis Religiosa, was adopted by Act of the Legislature, 1977.
The State Mineral, the Garnet, was adopted by Act of the Legislature, 1977.

The State Song, "Yankee Doodle," was adopted by Act of the Legislature, 1978.
The State Ship, USS Nautilus, was adopted by Act of the Legislature, 1983.
The State Hero, Nathan Hale, was adopted by Act of the Legislature, 1985.
The State Shellfish, the Eastern Oyster, was adopted by Act of the Legislature, 1989.
The State Composer, Charles Edward Ives was adopted by Act of the Legislature, 1991.
The State Fossil, Eubrontes Giganteus, was adopted by Act of the Legislature, 1991.
The State Heroine, Prudence Crandall, was adopted by Act of the Legislature, 1995.
The State Tartan was adopted by Act of the Legislature, 1995

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